Thursday, August 23, 2018

The Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill, 2018 (hereafter referred to as
FEO Bill, 2018) was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 12th March 2018. It was
passed by the Lok Sabha on 19th July 2018 and by the Rajya Sabha on 25th July
2018 (PRS Legislative Brief, 2018). It
has also received assent from the President on 5th August 2018 and is now a law
in force in the territory of India (Press Trust of India, 2018). The law
replaces the Fugitive Economic Offenders ordinance that was promulgated on 21st
April 2018. The objective of the FEO Bill, 2018 is to deal with offenders that
have fled the Indian jurisdiction and became fugitive after committing fraud,
money laundering, tax evasion etc. In this regard a list of around 30 people
was identified that were involved in financial irregularities that have either
fled the jurisdiction, living abroad or are expected to have turned fugitive
(Lok Sabha, 2018). The said ordinance and the FEO Bill, 2018 that replaces the
ordinance were put in place to deal with these people. The media reports that
followed, after the FEO Bill, 2018 receiving a nod from both the houses of
parliament, portrayed it as some sort of a panacea to deal with fugitives or a
credible threat, to say the least, for all fugitive economic offenders
(Unnikrishnan, 2018; Nair, 2018 etc.). However, before accepting such
propositions, there is a need to closely assess the provisions of this bill to
find out whether it is effective in dealing with the problem of fugitives.

Saturday, August 11, 2018

In
a recent interview with the Swarajya magazine, the Prime Minister of India apparently
said, ‘more than a lack of jobs, the issue is a lack of data on jobs’[1].
For those of us who have been using the National Sample
Survey Organisation (NSSO) data on employment and unemployment for decades now,
such a statement made by the government, come as a surprise. As a researcher I
have been using the NSSO data extensively for the purpose of determining the
employment-unemployment situation of the country for over a decade and have
informed most of my research on women’s work in India based on these data provided
by the NSSO employment-unemployment surveys (EUS).

The
other sources of data on employment and unemployment available from the
Economic census (establishment surveys), Census of India, Annual Survey of
Industries, the Directorate General of Employment and Training (DGET) suffer
from limited coverage and therefore are not representative. The Census although
provides the estimates of workers under the broad categories of rural-urban,
male-female, main-marginal and a few others, once in a decade, it does not
provide detailed information like the household surveys.

Unfortunately,
in a recent move by the government, the NSSO-EUS has been officially
discontinued since the last available figures for the 68th Round
(2011-12). It is thus a fact that post 2011-12 we do not have any extensive
information on the labour market situation. If we consider the six rounds of Annual
Employment-unemployment Surveys conducted by the Labour Bureau under the aegis
of the Ministry of Labour and Employment (MOLE) since 2010-11, which have been
somewhat similar in size and methodology to the NSSO-EUSfrom its third round
(2013-14), even those have not been continued after 2015-16.

Sunday, August 5, 2018

As the final draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) gets published in Assam we see an unprecedented humanitarian crisis slowly getting unfolded in the state as well as in the country. More than four million people have discovered themselves in a situation of statelessness overnight. While the fates of these people are yet to be decided one may wonder why such a massive exercise is being carried out.

Editorial

How do we see the world? It is neither a gaze, nor is it to invent the predetermined truth, it is to intervene from a position. Our seeing is changing at the same time and without any claim to excavate the unadulterated truth that never existed.
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